


Catching Fire

by RegalMisfortune



Series: Gods of Our Time [4]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Lunar Skins!, angela as the Vermilion Bird, first time actually writing moira, i had to look at about 100 pictures just to get into some mindset, moira doing unethical things which catches the ire of a birb goddess, tbh angela THIS close to setting moira on fire, who is also a deity lol, who knows if it's the right one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-21 12:23:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13740807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RegalMisfortune/pseuds/RegalMisfortune
Summary: Moira has caught the attention of the Vermilion Bird. It is not the first time, nor would it be the last, but this time she actually speaks to the Deity of Healing and All Things Good.And immediately sparks her ire once more.





	Catching Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hanktalkin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hanktalkin/gifts).



> I hope I did Moira justice, hanktalkin! 
> 
> A bit shorter than my other pieces, but oh well. Practice is practice after all. 
> 
> If you would like to see more of this series with particular characters and settings, please feel free to suggest them in the comments or on my [tumblr.](http://regalmisfortune.tumblr.com/)

The laboratory was dark, the faint signal lights of a few machines reflecting off glass vials. Everything was in its place, left there from when the occupant had retired for a few hours. No one entered the room, and no one left it, according to the logs. Not even some of the more knowledgeable light-footed sneaks would dare to snoop into this particular domain alone, valuing their lives far more than they were worth.

But something was not quite right.

The lights flickered on as Moira stepped in through the doorway, the door sliding shut silently behind her, the automatic lock clicking into place. Everything seemed just as the way she had left them a few hours prior, or at least superficially, but something nagged at her as she strode towards the computers, projections blinking into life under a single tap of a finger.

And therein laid the source of the niggling sensation just a few careful swipes of the projections and suddenly, the discovery of her entire week’s worth of data gone. Vanished.

Yet Moira’s lips curled into a smile rather than a frown, sharp as a knife edge as she drummed her fingernails against the metal surface with a rhythmic clicking.

“It seems that you have finally found me once again,” she murmured lowly to the empty room, her words laced with mild amusement.

It was not the first time her research had gone missing or corrupted beyond repair. It started years ago when she was still employed to Overwatch, her methods and ideals too immoral in the eyes of her superiors to be researched further. At first she believed something afoot amongst her employers that led to hundreds of hours of careful deductions and methodologies vanishing without a trace, but she was quick to learn that something far more… mythical… was happening. Especially when she started finding single, vibrant feathers on her desk that smoldered to dust and disappeared whenever she tried to touch them.

A calling card of the Vermilion Bird.

Moira heard of such an event occurring before, mostly amongst her peers of academia and medical, although she did not place much stock in their stories of discoveries so soon after finding a feather, or their entire research blowing up in their face. Yet all evidence had pointed towards the same ridiculous hypothesis, that there was a bored being of unmeasured and over-claimed power who occasionally popped in to ruin the more morally questionable research in some possible attempt to get her to cease.

Naturally, Moira merely learned to make multiple backups stashed away in more creative places. Fool me once, shame on me…

It was all very silly, the concept of holding beings on such a high pedestal. They were merely just entities of which little concrete research has been conducted upon, simply frivolous storytelling and overblown concepts. Nothing logical, nothing proven or disproven. It was much like something chewed up and spat out of the rumor mill that was social media, so distorted and misshapen that who knew what the truth was.

But Moira enjoyed the challenge, that a so-called god was going out of their way to tamper with her research. It only meant that she was going in the right direction, reaching closer towards her end goals. Not even a self-claimed deity could stop her. After all, what was a god to a woman of science?

“It’s been far too long, my dear,” Moira mused as she dug up a backup file of her work, spreading it out across the projected light with a lazy swipe. “You are losing your touch. What did you hope to accomplish with this?”

Things used to be far more exciting when she went from Overwatch to Blackwatch, especially when her experimentations happened to people. Her entire laboratory was torn asunder and scorch marks up the walls and across the ceiling, and yet not a single alarm had been raised. It had been as if one single blink everything had been destroyed, but Moira knew that the work she had done on Reyes was with smugness, a small victory over the Vermilion Bird.

Yet when Overwatch collapsed and disbanded and Moira made an impromptu move across the globe, the incidents had stopped. Her time spent in Oasis had been… quiet, and her work had been only just over the borderline of unethical. It seemed, however, that her work with Talon had stirred the attention of the Bird once more, after almost a decade of silence.

“I suppose I was hoping for a miracle, but alas, I should not expect much from the likes of you.”

Moira paused mid-swipe, blinking slowly before turning her head towards the unfamiliar voice. But the room was empty, devoid of no one but herself. It was the first time the Vermilion Bird ever stuck around to address her, the being long gone before Moira ever saw their destruction. It made her lips form curl as she straightened, one hand resting on the table to tap her nail against the metal in idle thought.

 “Oh? Does my research offend you?” she quipped back to the empty air, even as her eyes turned to observe the room around her. Even Sombra’s invisibility trick had its tells, but not even a faint haziness in the air could be detected. She wondered what made it so efficient, if it could be duplicated.

“Or… perhaps you are afraid,” she purred out, the projections flickering out with a curl of her finger before pushing away from the table. “Afraid of me and what I may discover.”

A dignified snort came from the general area of her desk. Moira’s gaze roamed over towards it, a waft of warm, heated air tickling a stray strand of hair against her forehead.

“I fear nothing of you,” the feminine voice responded, her words hinting with a familiar accent. German, perhaps. Intriguing, how a deity would have such a worldly accent. “I merely despise and pity the horrors you create. Such creations should not be even begin to be imagined, let alone exist.”

“I need not to explain myself to a creature that dares not shows its face,” Moira answered in kind, the corners of her mouth pulling upward into a sly smile.

And the deity fell for it, a few moments passing before out of the corner of her eye Moira spotted an unfamiliar form standing, a flitting rustle of wings pulling her attention towards the intruder before her body turned to face them.

It was a woman, winged and graceful in all her glory as she held her staff at her side, dark eyes pinning Moira with a fiery gleam and a frown on her painted lips as golden clawed fingers gripped at her staff, on edge and angry. A Valkyrie of fire and morality, a being who held her chin up in defiance against the ever-feared doctor.

It was no wonder many considered her a god.

“I am no mere creature,” the Vermilion Bird stated, glaring at Moira beyond her nose.

“We are all creatures,” Moira retorted. “You are simply one few dare to bother to observe further.”

“You are a monster. No heart and soul as black as the Turtle’s shell,” the Bird hissed through her teeth, bared and sharp as sparks danced over her wings in retaliation to her ire.

“There is no need to be curt with me,” Moira smirked at the Bird, enjoying how much she was ruffling her feathers. “It is not like I do anything to you personally.”

The Bird was before her within a blink, standing shorter than the doctor herself but the hot air that she brought with her in that motion with her fury made her presence far larger than her actual size, eyes burning as she sneered over her nose at Moira, the sudden heat almost unbearable if she had not nerves of pure steel to merely quirk a brow at the deity before her.

“I have my eye on you.” The Bird jutted a finger out as she spoke, the sharp talon digging into Moira’s breastbone. Was this what it felt like when she did the same to the others? Perhaps she should do it more often…

“You cannot watch me all the time, little Bird,” Moira all but purred out, smirking down at the deity, if only to watch her smolder. “The world is a big place, and you have other good little souls to worry your time with.”

“Watch me,” the deity replied hotly, heated air ruffling Moira’s lab coat before the Vermilion Bird simply disappeared before her very eyes, taking the fire with her.

The warning only made Moira grin, a cunning, predatory smile as she smoothed her coat with her hands and turned to tap the projections back to life. She hadn’t felt this much of a spark of life in years, her work finally seeking an attention of someone worth observing. After all, who else could say they conspired willingly against a _god_?

“Let’s see how far I can push you, hm?”


End file.
